Lindsey Mead · Writing & Getting Published Expert

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” (Louisa May Alcott)

This quote, long known to me, has been in my mind lately. It occurred to me yesterday that overall, though, I feel a strange combination of storm-tossed and run aground. Both whipped around in a frenzy of wind and water, but also stuck, unable to move. This contradiction underlies a tension, I think, that I’ve written about before: the feeling of holding opposite poles in my hands simultaneously. The middle place, I guess. Stuck and lost. At the same time or alternating with an awkward rhythm.

Neithe…

I loved Dani Shapiro’s essay called On the Brass Ring, which I read yesterday. Dani’s central point is that, for a writer, the only “brass ring,” the only crowning achievement that means anything, is the continued ability to “go into the darkness” and write. There is no other goal for which to shoot. Her comments, while specific to writing, I think can be generalized more broadly.

This is my favorite passage:

There is no brass ring. The procuring of agents, publishers, book contracts, sales, reviews, grants, awards–all writers can be forgiven for comparing, for believing that such a mom…

Karen Maezen Miller is one of my idols. No, really. She, even on the screen, radiates peace, calm, and the hard-won wisdom of someone who has really put in her time to live in her life. I mention the hard-won part because my sense is that for her this is a practice, a deliberate effort. This makes her lambent wisdom all the more impressive to me, and makes her inspiration that much more influential. I highly recommend Maezen’s first book, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood, and I’ve already preordered her second book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life.

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What complex, multi-layered animals humans are. I am melancholy tonight, thick in the fog of free-floating sadness that follows me around, hovering nearby and descending regularly to envelop me. Thinking about the legions that are contained in each single person, the layers of emotion, memory, defenses, and biology that make us who we each are.

A fascinating article in the Atlantic describes a study of 268 men for 72 years. The study’s lofty goal is to understand happiness. The article about Vaillant, the originator of the study, makes many salient points – it is long but well worth readi…

I was driving the children home yesterday evening when they started asking me about Christmas. It was a dark, rainy night and the car felt like a little self-contained universe, moving through space. Grace and Whit wanted to know all about Christmas and why we celebrate it when we do. I floundered with some general answers about the virgin Mary and the manger. Grace told Whit confidently that Christmas was “When baby Jesus was born.”

He then asked, “So why are there presents?” Grace immediately replied, a withering note of duh! in her voice, “Because it’s a birthday celebration.”

Whit t…